


In the Ring

by Rynfinity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:45:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2472056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Someday your cockiness will earn you a sorry fate,” Sif assures him.</p>
<p>He shrugs again, smirking at her.  “Alas, one might say it has already.”</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>A little Friday night sibling rivalry in the halls of Asgard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Ring

“You truly are terrible at this,” Sif pants out between blows. It’s a dance of sorts, all jabs and feints and parries. Her stave - heavier than what Loki would choose personally but undisputedly deadly in her quick, strong hands - whistles just shy of his face as he only just barely ducks in time to save himself.

Loki grins. “Say what you will.” He backs smoothly out of range, angling his head and looking at her sideways. “I am not the one bleeding.”

Sif wipes her face with her upper arm. Her forearm sports a blood-smeared, shallow gash. “The likes of this,” she says, waving her arm in front of his face, “is hardly going to kill me.”

He takes another step back and draws himself up to his full height. Loki’s frame hasn’t filled out like his brother’s – not so far, and he’s starting to give up any lingering hope of it ever happening – but he’s finally grown to the point where he can convincingly tower over her. It’s still new enough to be entertaining; consequently, he does it at every possible opportunity. “I have to suspect it could and would,” he points out, “if only the blade with which it was dealt had first been dipped in poison.” He looks smugly down his nose at her.

“Leave it to the likes of you to cheat like a common beggar,” she snarls, angry now. She glares at him, her chest still heaving.

Loki shrugs. “I’ve been led to understand that the point is to win.”

“Someday your cockiness will earn you a sorry fate,” Sif assures – threatens? -him.

He shrugs again, smirking at her. “Alas, one might say it has already.”

~

“What happened to Sif,” Thor asks his mother as the four of them – Thor, Odin, Loki, and Frigga – sit down to dinner that evening. Loki glances over as Sif stalks past them without acknowledging so much as his mere presence. She is casually dressed in summer-weight leathers and light armor, and she sports a bruise on one cheek. There is a thick dressing wrapping her forearm; its gauze stands out bright white against her tanned skin.

Loki stifles a smirk and ends up inhaling half a mouthful of water. The ensuing coughing and spluttering is anything but pleasant. Still, he makes a spectacular enough scene - without any real intension of so doing - that his brother is distracted.

Put another way, his suffering turns out to be worth it.

Almost.

“Perhaps you should ask your brother,” Odin tells Thor, “when he is done trying to inhale his supper.” They both turn to look at Loki. “I suspect,” the Allfather adds, “that he knows rather more than he is opting to let on.”

At that, the whole table turns and stares. Loki blots his watering eyes with his napkin, then wipes his nose. Unlike his brother, he’s a firm believer that – in so, so many ways – order matters. “Yes,” he asks, feigning ignorance. “I am sorry,” he goes on, thumping his own chest with one loose fist. “Did you ask me something?”

Thor frowns. His hair, pulled back in the sort of loose, sloppy bun that leaves Loki looking like an unmade bed, glows in the torchlight.

It’s terribly ironic that his golden brother – the one who (to hear their parents talk, at least) was born to bring down the storm - resembles nothing so closely as an enormous ray of sunshine.

“Did you do something to her,” Thor asks Loki, who has to struggle not to visibly shake himself back to reality.

“We were in the ring,” Loki explains. “Sparring.”

A strange look spreads across Thor’s face, followed closely by a triumphant smile. “Ah, of course,” he says, in the disgustingly self-satisfied tone of an insufferable know-it-all. _That_ position, Loki reserves solely for himself. “You cheated.”

“We fought,” Loki disagrees. “I won. She did not like it. How is that cheating?”

Thor leans across the table, right in Loki’s face. “I’m sure it is,” he counters, “because I _know_ you.”

~

For several weeks after that Loki doesn’t venture into the ring. Not to fight Sif, not to fight the stable boys with whom he normally enjoys trading blows. Never. His offended ego simply will not permit it. Instead he trains in the privacy of his own rooms, sparring against a partner of his own making.

At first he fashions the clone after himself; later on, when he tires of raw strategy and wants something more akin to sport, he styles his opponent after his bright, shining brother.

It may not be as satisfying as taking on the real thing would be but – he thinks, as he bests the clone down for the eight straight time – it does have its certain charms.

~

Until, of course, it doesn’t.

The real Thor bursts into Loki’s chambers without bothering to knock and stomps across the room. He is old enough to sport the perfectly adequate beginnings of a beard but not above sulking like a thwarted toddler. “Why do you do these things to our friends,” he snarls. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

Ah, _there’s_ the question. What Loki wouldn’t give to know the answer to _that_ one. “They are _your_ friends, brother,” he reminds Thor. “They only ever put up with me because of you.”

“Nonsense,” Thor huffs, but the guilty look on his face says something else entirely.

~

The next time the two of them fight, Loki doesn’t give Sit the opportunity to pick weapons. He wins the coin toss and goes right for the daggers. His intent is to fight fairly – to _win_ fairly – this time, to leave no opening through which doubt can seep in and destroy everything.

Sif turns out to be good with the small knives, surprisingly so. By the time they call _this_ bout a draw, the two of them are _both_ bleeding. Even so, Loki considers it a win; Sif shakes his hand at the end of the match and he shakes hers back. The two of them are sweaty and dirt-caked.

“Good fight,” she tells him. His heart swells.

~

“So, tell me how you cheated this time,” Thor demands of Loki at dinner. “It does look like today was a closer call,” he adds without waiting for an answer; he looks Loki up and down.

Loki scrambles to his feet. Their parents aren’t yet there to see. “You are but jealous,” he snaps. “They are only _our_ friends until they dare to actually like me.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” he thinks he hears his brother call after him.

Not that it matters.


End file.
